


Unmade

by stateofintegrity



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Controlled Loki, M/M, lots of quotes from the film, tortured loki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 23:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13891056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: "You don’t understand. Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out and stuff something else in? You know whatit’s like to be unmade?" Loki has been unmade by Thanos and sent to Earth as his weapon. A retelling of the first Avengers film through Loki's eyes.





	1. After the Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that there are two Lokis operating here: one is described as the Ally. I hope the story makes this clear, but I wanted to add a note just in case! I used the script found here as reference: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwiQsJmmxtjZAhXP0VMKHdMrB38QFggvMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.screenplaysandscripts.com%2Fscript_files%2FA%2FAVENGERS%2C%2520THE%2520(2012)%2520Joss%2520Whedon%2520(Shooting).pdf&usg=AOvVaw2vvZILhOPv2L-zun90_aaw

“[Hurld headlong flaming](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/text.shtml) from th' Ethereal Skie  
With hideous ruine and combustion down  
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

[He] Lay vanquisht

Confounded though immortal…” – Milton, _Paradise Lost_

  1. After the Fall



Language has ever been his gift and his refuge.

 

The Allfather’s power lies in rule and command.  His brother’s power comes from sheer, brute strength – but to wield language is to possess the very power of creation. To say a thing – and to say it well – is to make it so. Yet there had been times in this awful place when language had deserted him entire, when all he could do was mutter broken syllables through lips where bubbles of heated blood formed and burst.  (It had not taken the Chitauri and their ruler long to discover his true nature. The cold, dark desolation of their world had not pained him, but fire was quite another story.) “Ally,” they call him now, and he shivers as the word stabs into his ears.

 

His sensitivity to words – his affinity for them – tells him that the choice of the word “ally” is as deliberate as a brand. Never again will he be Loki Silvertongue or Loki brother of Thor. Now he is the Ally, the war leader, _the traitor_.

 

But under those damning words exists another truth; Loki Laufeyson is to be a pawn, a target, a _mask_. His inner self is wrapped in a cocoon of razor wire and thorns; occasionally, a burst of dark flame dances along the sharp edges, increasing his agony. No knife that he can call to hand or conjure can break the bonds holding his spirit; his only hope lies in distancing himself from the one who had woven those bonds. If Earth is far enough away, perhaps the bonds will strain, perhaps he can work a single finger-joint free. It might be enough. It _has_ to be enough.

 

But Earth will suffer for it.

 

Yes, a part of him _had_ wanted the Earth. He had wanted to punish the brother who had let him fall from the bridge, wanted to cause him pain for adoring the mortals and overlooking Loki who had always stood beside him – always loved him – but he had not meant for that fleeting desire to be ripped from the folds of his brain in the rawness after his fall. He had not meant his fantasies of revenge to be made into the master plan that would destroy one of the nine realms. An unwilling ally – psychically and physically tortured, subdued by bursts of magic and alien technology alike – Loki-in-form (Loki the Ally) is now a weapon to be aimed at the world his brother loves. He clenches his eyes, his inner self knowing that his fool brother – open, honest, impulsive, a stranger to subtlety – will come to fight for what he cares for. _I am become his destroyer… and he will never see that I am not myself. He will imagine the choices are mine, the chaos, mine._

His soul screams but the blue gem swallows down his cries.


	2. Confounded

“…round he throws his baleful eyes  
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay  
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate…” – Milton, _Paradise Lost_

 

 

His spirit – his true self – is shocked into hiding by the violence of his return to Earth. Only the Ally, the Loki that Thanos created exists, but even _he_ is addled by the power flaring around him. And he is still terribly weak. He does not stride out of the portal as a conquering god, but kneels, panting, pained by the spurs digging into his psyche. The reflective surfaces of the walls and floors show him the bruised-plum rings about his eyes, the sharpness of the bones under his skin. He is ashamed to have been brought so low but everything in him that might call out for help is still trammeled. The Other wants him to move forward, to regain the tesseract at a stroke. He takes a moment to catalogue his bruises, to sift through the varied flavors of his pain. Someone is shouting at him. Vision swimming, he mistakes the man for Odin for a moment. Like the Allfather, the man has but one eye. Like Odin, he moves like a creature accustomed to obedience.

 

 “Sir, please put down the spear!”

 

His eyes are drawn to the terrible, piercing light of the blue gem in his weapon. A killing light. The Ally in him suddenly remembers what he has been made to do. Several mortals fall to the destructive power of the scepter before he finds one that can be unmade as he was and recast as an ally.

 

“You have heart,” he tells this fierce-eyed adversary, resting the tip of the scepter against his breastbone. His spirit self is shuddered by pangs of regret, but the Ally is acting out its orders and he is caged inside of himself, unable to sunder spirit from flesh. Clint Barton is now like him, a servant to the mind stone and to Thanos.

 

“Please don’t,” he tells the one-eyed man – the leader – who has moved to protect the tesseract. “I still need that.” If he does not reclaim the glowing cube… his bound self (his true self) writhes at the thought.

 

“This doesn’t have to get any messier,” the man says, attempting to calm him.

 

“Of course it does,” the Ally tells him. Loki is helpless. He cannot prevent this from escalating, cannot stop the body count from rising. “I’ve come too far for anything else.” The one-eyed man cannot know how far he has come – in literal distance as well as in distance from his true self – and even if he did, Loki doubts he would appreciate the lengths and depths of his suffering, the way he is still suffering even now. Made to be the main character in Thanos’s drama, he announces himself in a name that no longer belongs to him. “I am Loki of Asgard and I am burdened with glorious purpose.”

 

Another man, grey-haired and balding, perks up. “Loki? Brother of Thor?”

His brother’s name makes his true self convulse in pain. The Ally is just enraged. Thor will always be first. Firstborn, first in any match between them, first in the hearts of their parents. And first to fall.

 

The one-eyed man has heard of Asgard. “We have no quarrel with your people.”

 

Pained laughter, a product of hatred and pride, surges up his long pale throat to lash at the air. “An ant has no quarrel with a boot.”

 

The listening Fury cannot know it, but Loki has _been_ the ant, a creature that believed fully in the strength of its chemical weapons and exoskeleton – a creature that lived to feel itself shatter under the merest pressure.

 

Fury grips his weapon tighter, reassuring himself. “You planning to step on us?”

 

 _Loki_ , great schemer and mischief maker that he is, is planning _nothing_. All of his plans have been caught in greater webs, bound in strands more iron than silk, and injected with venom. Inside of the Ally he can only twitch. The Ally speaks for him. “I come with glad tidings – of a world made free.”

 

Fury will keep him talking as long as he can, hoping for reinforcements. He does not know that the only powers strong enough to defeat Loki must come from worlds away. “Free from what?”

 

“Freedom. Freedom is life’s great lie.” The Other _did_ teach him that; his inner self almost believes what the Ally is saying. “Once you accept that in your heart, you will know peace.”

 

He turns to the grey-haired man as he speaks; the man spoke as one who knows Thor, believes in his. The Ally touches the scepter to his chest and unmakes him, too.

 

Fury continues to play for time. “Yeah, you say peace. I kinda think you mean the other thing.”

 

One of his new servants, the younger one, turns to Loki. “Sir, Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow and drop a hundred feet of rock on us. He means to bury us.”

 

Loki thinks it might be the best thing.

 

Fury grins; such a man does not fear death. “Like the pharaohs of old.”

 

The Ally is deeply insulted. Asgard existed long before the pharaohs and their pitiful excuses for gods.

 

The older servant confirms. “He’s right. The portal is collapsing in on itself. We’ve got maybe two minutes before this goes critical.”

 

Two minutes. A few heartbeats and he and the tesseract could be hidden away, broken into fragments. Weak as he is, the Ally cannot allow it. His servants handle the rest, from shooting Fury and taking up the tesseract to commandeering their transportation. The humans make a feeble attempt at pursuit, reminding him of the ants he so recently referenced. Exhausted by his journey to Earth, he leaves the fighting to his own humans until the chopper appears; it is easy and pleasing to drive it to the ground with a single blast. The Ally’s war has officially begun.


	3. Seeking the throne

“High on a [Throne of Royal State](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_2/text.shtml), which far  
Outshon the wealth of [Ormus](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_2/text.shtml) and of Ind,  
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand  
Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,  
Satan exalted sat, [by merit rais'd](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_2/text.shtml) [ 5 ]  
To that bad eminence; and from despair  
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires  
Beyond thus high…” – Milton, _Paradise Lost_

 

All around him, his ants scurry. Their speed and ingenuity is impressive. How quickly they established a base and began their work! They will prove useful subjects once his rule is established. The Ally is drawn from his dreams of conquest when the scepter glows and transports him, dumping him at the feet of his masters.

 

“The Chitauri grow restless.”

 

The voice has fangs and they pierce whatever tender, true parts of him still exist, but the Ally is in control. He pulls himself upright and dusts sparkling detritus from his robes. “Let them gird themselves,” he says. “I will lead them in a glorious battle.”

 

Loki thrashes inside of the self he has been forced to wear. He is no war leader. That role was always played by his brother and he was proud to stand at the shoulder of the one who wielded Mjolnir. He knows in that moment what the war will be: a grave into which all of his sins will be shoveled. The Chitauri will see that he does not survive.

 

“Battle?” the Other is amused. “Against the meager might of Earth?”

 

“Glorious but not lengthy.” Loki regains the upper hand for a moment and taunts those who hold him prisoner. “ _If_ your force is as formidable as you claim.”

 

The Other does not welcome this show of defiance. “You question us? You question _him_?

He who out the scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out- defeated!?”

 

Language again. How a potent a weapon. How easily bent to support a desired version of events. Inside, Loki Silvertongue is laughing. Thanos _did_ put a scepter in his hand – after he broke all of his fingers. And it was equally true that Thanos _had_ given him knowledge, he had simply chosen to do so after he had stripped the nerveways of his brain naked and raw, emptying them . And certainly he had purpose now; he had been melted down and poured into a mold like a bullet. But bullets did not choose their targets; bullets did not celebrate when they pierced flesh to lodge in bone.

 

“I was king,” he reminds his captors. “The rightful king of Asgard, betrayed!” The look in Odin’s eyes had been the greatest betrayal. The Allfather had come to regret saving him from Jotunheim; the Allfather had wanted him to fall and be no more.

 

The Other sneers, revealing a malformed mouth with bloodied teeth. “Your ambition is little, full of childish need.”

 

Loki rocks back and forth inside of the Ally. All of his faults and hopes and fears had been laid bare by Thanos’s power. The Other knows – _all_ the Chitauri know – that he once dreamed of proving himself equal of Thor and winning Odin’s love. They laughed to see so much of his great soul bound up in such petty desire. “We look beyond Earth,” the Other reminds him. “To the greater worlds the tesseract will unveil.”

 

 _Allfather aid those words if you reach them_ , thinks Loki, pain piercing him for every trespass, even in the privacy of his own mind. Once, he had considered his mind a treasure-house, a vault of secrets and power, a wardrobe that would yield up the props to allow him to play any part he wished to play. So much of him had been hidden and protected inside of his skull; now even this oldest and safest haven was breached. Still, he has strength enough to bandy words again; it is a strength he will not waste. “You don’t have the tesseract yet.”

 

The assembled Chitauri recognize the sound of his true voice, realize that he has returned to himself for at least a moment. They surge toward him, ready to tear him down. The Other holds up a hand, halting them.

 

“I don’t threaten,” the Ally assures him. “But until I open the doors, until your force is mine to command, you are but words.” Once, his power had come from words. Now he must shield himself against them, bargain his way into position, use this mask they have made for him until he can shatter it. “Subtle as a coiled serpent,” Thor’s friends had been wont to call him. Loki hopes he can be subtle enough to survive this.

 

“You will have your war, Asgardian.” That the Other refuses to grant him his name only reinforces his state. He is a weapon, the Ally. He is disposable. “But if you fail, if the tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barrent moon, no crevice where he cannot find you.” The Other stretches out with his power, kindling memories of his torture in Loki’s brain. “You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain!”

 

The blue gem in his scepter flashes again and he is restored to the laboratory, body chiming as if after the reentry of his spirit. For now, the Ally is restored and in control and Loki whimpers in the dark while remembered horrors rise up around him and keep him in check.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later, he returns to his best servants, the two he created to help him elude S.H.I.E.L.D.  Selvig’s face is childlike in his delight as he heaps praise upon the tesseract. “It’s much more than knowledge,” he effuses. “It’s truth!”

 

“I know,” says the Ally. And he does. The tesseract – or powers quite similar to the powers it has, anyway – are responsible for his birth. But Loki, through withered within him and coiled tight as a bud, is not dead, and he pipes up for a mocking moment. “It, ah – it touches everyone differently.” _And when powers like to it touched me, my skin fled away from the contact and my blood boiled through my bones like acid; I fell to my knees not because I would kneel, but because there was nothing left of me to hold me up._ The Ally kicks him over and over until he crumples. Then he turns to his other servant. “What did it show you, Agent Barton?”

 

“My next target.”

 

 _Here is a man who deserves to be turned into a weapon_ , thinks Loki. The Ally has hijacked all of his cleverness and Loki is torn between being impressed at seeing his mind work and hating him for making use of his resources.

 

Selvig laughs at Barton’s soldier- speak. “Stick in the mud. All the secrets of the universe unveiled before him and he’s talking about targets! He’s got no soul.” He gives Barton a playful shove to show he’s teasing. “No wonder you chose this, this tomb to work in!”

 

Barton does not take kindly to being teased and moves out of reach of any further contact. “Well, the Radisson doesn’t have three levels of lead lined flooring between SHIELD and that Cube,” he snaps, justifying his choices.

 

The Ally moves to soothe his ruffled hawk. “I can see why Fury chose you to guard it.”

 

Hawk does not preen as his namesake would, but he cools, returns to strategy. “You’re going to have to content with him, sir. As long as he’s in the air, I can’t pin him down. And he’ll be putting together a team.”

 

The Ally is interested, brown arching like crow’s wings against a winter sky. “Are they a threat?”

 

“To each other, more likely,” Barton admits. He knows the personalities involved. Every single one of their files has a line under the psychological profile that basically translates to “does not play well with others.” “But,” he says at last, “If Fury can get them on track, and he might, they could throw some noise our way. Especially the big green guy.”

 

Inside, Loki’s long fingers are steepled, gripping each other until they go white. Will Fury’s team include Thor? Is there any way that S.H.I.E.L.D. can get a message to his brother? And, if they can, will Thor know to look past the Ally that Thanos has made and see Loki imprisoned in the shadows? It is all too much to hope, but he has nothing left but hope to hold to.

The Ally ignores his childish wishes, his mewling sounds. “You admire Fury.”

 

Barton nods his agreement. “He has a clear line of sight.”

 

“Is that why you failed to kill him?

 

Barton does not seem to sense his danger, to realize that a second failure will end in his own death. His answer is an honest one. “It might be. I was disoriented.”

 

Inside, Loki laughs again. Such a gift for euphemism these humans have! Thanos’s magic is “disorienting” in the same way that Thor’s storms are “refreshing drizzles.”

 

“And I’m not at my best with a gun,” Barton finishes.

 

The Ally decides to accept his excuses for now; he still has need of him. He gives Barton his instructuions. “I want to know everything you can tell me about this team of his. I would test their mettle.”

Inside, Loki’s stomach drops. So this is how the Other means to be rid of him. He will throw him up against Fury’s team as a distraction and see him killed while the Chitauri score a victory and retrieve the tesseract. The Ally goes on: “I am weary of scuttling in shadow. I mean to rule this world, not burrow in it.”

 _But Loki, God of Tunnels, is so much **safer** , _Loki jests; he doesn’t even mind the kick he receives in the ribs.

“Revealing yourself… that’s a risk,” says Barton.

 _Yes. A risk that’s going to see my helmeted head removed from my shoulders and bleeding in the dirt._ The Ally ignores him, seeming to relish the prospect of conflict. “Oh, yes.”

The servant rises to the challenge in his master’s eyes. “If you’re really set on making yourself known, I could be useful.”  


The Ally’s smile is dangerous, magnetic. “Tell me what you need.”

 

Loki answers before Barton can: _A quick exit, a very large bottle of wine, and several weeks worth of uninterrupted sleep._

Barton’s answer is far more creative. “A distraction. And an eyeball.”  


The Ally is still smiling. Everything is going according to plan.


End file.
